where he had secured a practical bridgehead. He
therefore masked Potgieter's with seven battalions and twenty-four guns,
and sent Warren with twelve battalions and thirty-six guns to turn the
right, which rested on the lofty hill--almost mountain--of Spion Kop.
The Boers, to meet this turning movement, extended their line westwards
along the heights of the Tugela valley almost as far as Acton Homes.
Their whole position was, therefore, shaped like a note of interrogation
laid on its side, --/\, the curve in front of General Lyttelton, the
straight line before Sir Charles Warren. At the angle formed by the
junction of the curve and the line stands Spion Kop--'look-out hill.'
The curved position in front of General Lyttelton has been already
described in a previous letter. The straight position in front of Sir
Charles Warren ran in two lines along the edge and crest of a plateau
which rises steeply two miles from the river, but is approachable by
numerous long _aretes_ and dongas. These letters have completed the
chronicle down to the evening of the 18th, when the successful cavalry
action was fought on the extreme left.

I do not know why nothing was done on the 19th, but it does not appear
that anything was lost by the delay. The enemy's entrenchments were
already complete, and neither his numbers nor the strength of his
positions could increase.

On the 20th Warren, having crept up the _aretes_ and dongas, began his
attack. The brigades of Generals Woodgate and Hart pushed forward on the
right, and the Lancashire and Irish regiments, fighting with the usual
gallantry of her Majesty's troops, succeeded, in spite of a heavy fire
of rifles and artillery, in effecting lodgments at various points along
the edge of the plateau, capturing some portions of the enemy's first
line of entrenchments. On the extreme left the cavalry under Lord
Dundonald demonstrated effectively, and the South African Light Horse
under Colonel Byng actually took and held without artillery support of
any kind a high hill, called henceforward 'Bastion Hill,' between the
Dutch right and centre. Major Childe, the officer whose squadron
performed this daring exploit, was killed on the summit by the shell
fire to which the successful assailants were subjected by the Boers. In
the evening infantry reinforcements of Hildyard's Brigade arrived, and
at dawn the cavalry handed over the hill to their charge. The losses
during the day did not exceed three hundr